Hard Disk

Good Morning,

for video editing can i u use caviar black(western Digital) hard disk,they is 3 colour...blue,green and black.which hdd is best for video editing.


Thank You
Thayalan Paramasawam

In some older posts from other forums I read that black is the quickest in performance at the price of higher noise and power consumption, blue is general, green the slowest but most silent and lower power consumption.

I have a blue 1 TB but am considering a third HDD to optimize speed and space. Is the difference in speed between Black and Blue worth the extra price and extra noise (I have a super silent set-up)?

Asus P8Z68-V Pro gen 3; i7-2600k; 16 GB RAM, ASUS-NVIDIA GTX 570, 240 GB SSD as OS and 1 TB WD as data drive, Coolmaster Silencio 550 silent case (I love it). Adobe Production Premiere CS 6

[Robert Dulfer] "Is the difference in speed between Black and Blue worth the extra price and extra noise (I have a super silent set-up)?"

The three Caviar Blacks that are on my desk - I don't ever hear. I do hear the enclosure's fan occasionally when it kicks in. But that doesn't mean anything because I am seriously hard of hearing.

I doubt their noise levels are very different - but if you dig in to their environment specifications, you may find something out.

Bottom line, I'd stay away from Caviar Blacks altogether - (1) haven't had a good experience with them, (2) WD doesn't allow to use them in RAID, (3) Hitachi, even though it was acquired by WD, makes better drives with newer tech.

I'd get Hitachi 7K3000 or better yet, 7K4000 drives - preferably enterprise class versions - any day over Caviar Blacks.

Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Engineer
DV411 - Los Angeles, CA

It can be, and will likely perform fantastically well - although personally I'd stay away from using SSDs as media storage:
- SSDs don't like lots of stuff being constantly written to them - just not designed for that.
- they still cost close to 10x traditional drives (in $$ per GB) - 5x vs. enterprise class ones
- they're really good where their performance and other benefits (light power usage; tolerance to shocks) matter - which isn't video editing

So for video storage, the concensus is to still use traditional drives - stand-alone or in RAID. RAID0 for 2-3, RAID5 for 4-5, RAID6 for 6+. There are some exceptions though - mostly capturing uncompressed - in BMCC or Hyperdeck.

Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Engineer
DV411 - Los Angeles, CA

[Alex Gerulaitis] "WD doesn't allow to use them in RAID, (3) Hitachi, even though it was acquired by WD, makes better drives with newer tech.

I'd get Hitachi 7K3000 or better yet, 7K4000 drives - preferably enterprise class versions - any day over Caviar Blacks."

I really pity WD for this bully marketing practice, it's clear they want us to buy their enterprise and more expensive drives as well as I'm sure they lost many system builders fans including me.

However, it seems you would buy Hitachi enterprise builds (more expensive) but not WD counterparts and so still being able to set RAID systems too, any particular reason a part that noise?
I was Seagate's fan too but the last (and no more) 2 drives I bought for an expensive system had the "click" problem, anytime Windows made a request the drive made noise.
I could not return them because it was too hard to complain about but please don't tell me that Seagate didn't know the problem?

Now I'm an happy Hitachi customer (finger crossed) :)

good morning,

thank you very much to all who adivice me.

thayalan paramsawam